‘Late Night’ Heir Jimmy Fallon To Have Funny Beaten Into Him Via Online Talk Show

Maybe it came out of concerns over his tepidly reviewed performance at Just For Laughs, where the straight-faced-challenged former SNL star delivered on the audience’s darkest fears with groaner ditties like “You Spit When You Talk” and “Car Wash For Peace.” In any case, the strange talent-shuffle scheduled at NBC late night —ratings-leader Jay Leno ejected from his Tonight Show job, Conan O’Brien shuffled in to take his place, and Jimmy Fallon ushered into the post vacated by O’Brien—has become just that much stranger. Dark Canadian comedy overlord Lorne Michaels announced Fallon would cut his teeth with a web-based mini-show leading up to his big gig:

[Michaels] told television reporters here Sunday that he wants Mr. Fallon to work out as many of the rough spots in his presentation as possible in performances on a website.

The web performances will likely begin in the fall, long before the transition from Mr. Leno for Mr. O’Brien is set to take place. The entries will not constitute anything like an entire hour-long show. “I expect that we’ll do something like five or 10 minutes,” Mr. Michaels said.

But he said they most likely will be on every night, to try to establish the rhythm of a nightly show. And he said, “I’m going to post them at 12:30 every night, so people will begin to look for Jimmy at that time.”

The unprecedented step doesn’t exactly smell like a vote of confidence. This was, after all, a talent who appeared on live, late night network TV from 1998 to 2004; how much more YouTube-honing does he need? Having come of age in the internet era, however, we really see no reason that Fallon shouldn’t benefit from all the smaller-stakes advantages that medium implies. The deceptively difficult art of the interview, for example, is something that takes much practice. If he can sharpen his conversational skills first on the likes of Fat Tron Guy and Cindy Margolis, perhaps he’ll be that much better equipped to later shoot the breeze with their A-list counterparts, Jack Black and Sandra Bullock.

• Fallon Will Start ‘Late Night’ on the Web [NY Times]